“Will you do me the favor to stand in front of this long mirror with me?”
(Page 305)

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE I. How It Began 3 II. Jenny 15 III. Forlorn Etta 21 IV. A Pitiful Plight 28 V. Friends in Need 39 VI. Wanted, a Waitress 45 VII. Jenny’s Teacher 59 VIII. An Adventure Filled Day 75 IX. An Old Friend Appears 88 X. Brother and Sister 94 XI. Views and Reviews 99 XII. Plots and Plays 105 XIII. Ferns and Friends 108 XIV. Dearest Desires 116 XV. Peers or Pigs 125 XVI. Good News 133 XVII. Pride Meets Pride 138 XVIII. A New Experience 145 XIX. A Welcome Guest 151 XX. Ingratitude Personified 168 XXI. A Second Meeting 178 XXII. Revelations and Regrets 186 XXIII. Mother and Son 194 XXIV. Harold and Charles 201 XXV. A Jolly Plan 207 XXVI. A Rustic Cabin 217 XXVII. Fun as Farmers 222 XXVIII. A Difficult Promise 232 XXIX. The Haughty Gwynette 238 XXX. Gwyn’s Awakening 249 XXXI. Conflicting Emotions 257 XXXII. Three Girls 266 XXXIII Gwynette’s Choice 279 XXXIV An Agreeable Surprise 289 XXXV A Birthday Cake 293 XXXVI Sisters 302

SISTERS

CHAPTER I.
HOW IT BEGAN

Gold and blue were the colors that predominated on one glorious April day. Gold were the fields of poppies that carpeted the foothills stretching down to the very edge of Rocky Point, against which the

jewel-blue Pacific lapped quietly. It was at that hour of the tides when the surf is stilled.

A very old adobe house surrounded on three sides by wide verandas, the pillars of which were eucalyptus logs, stood about two hundred feet back from the point. Rose vines, clambering at will over the picturesque old dwelling, were a riot of colors. There was the exquisite pink Cecil Brunner in delicate, long-stemmed clusters; Gold of Ophir blossoms in a mass glowing in the sunshine, while intertwined were the vines of the star-like white Cherokee and Romona, the red.

Mingled with their fragrance was the breath of heliotrope which grew, bushwise, at one corner so luxuriantly that often it had to be cut away lest it cover the gravel path which led around the house to the orchard. There, under fruit trees that were each a lovely bouquet of pearly bloom, stood row after row of square white hives, while bees, busy at honey gathering, buzzed everywhere.

Now and then, clear and sweet, rose the joyous song of mating birds.

A little old woman, seated in a rustic rocker on the western side porch, dropped her sewing on her lap and smiled on the scene with blissful content. What a wonderful world it was and how happy she and Silas had been since Jenny came. She glanced across the near gardens, aglow with early bloom, to a patch of ploughed brown earth where an old man was cultivating between rows of green shoots, some of them destined to produce field corn for the cow and chickens, and the rest sweet corn for the sumptuous table of Mrs. Poindexter-Jones.

Then the gaze of the little old woman continued a quarter of a mile along the rocky shore to a grove of sycamore trees, where stood the castle-like home of the richest woman in Santa Barbara township. Only the topmost turrets could be seen above the towering treetops. The vast grounds were surrounded by a high cypress hedge, and, not until he reached the wrought iron gates could a passer-by obtain a view of the magnificence that lay within. But the little old woman knew it all in detail, as she had been housekeeper there for many years, until, in middle-age, she had married Silas Warner, who managed the farm for Mrs. Algernon Poindexter-Jones.

For the past fifteen years the happy couple had lived in the old adobe house at Rocky Point, while at Poindexter Arms, as the beautiful estate was named, there had been a succession of housekeepers and servants, for their mistress was domineering and hard to please.

Of late years the grand dame had seldom been seen by the kindly old farmer, Si Warner and his wife, for Mrs. Poindexter-Jones had preferred to live in her equally palatial home in San Francisco overlooking the Golden Gate.

She visited Santa Barabra periodically, merely to assure herself that her orders were being carried out by the servants left in charge of Poindexter Arms and Rocky Point farm. Often Mrs. Si Warner did not catch a glimpse of their employer on these fleeting visits, and yet she well knew that the imperious mistress of millions was linked more closely than she liked to remember to the old couple at Rocky Point.

As she resumed her sewing, memory recalled to her that long ago incident which, by the merest chance, had made the proud woman and the humble, sharers of a secret which neither had cared to divulge.

It had been another spring day such as this, only they had all been younger by fourteen years.

While ploughing in the lot nearest the highway, Farmer Si had noticed a strange equipage drawn to one side of the road. He thought little of it at first, believing it to be a traveling tinsmith, as the canopied wagon was evidently furnished with household utensils, but, when an hour later, he again reached that side of the field and saw the patient horse still standing there with drooping head and no one in sight, his curiosity was aroused, and, leaping over the rail fence, he went to investigate.

Under that weather-stained canopy a sad tragedy had been enacted. On the driver’s seat a young man, clothed in a garb of a clergyman, seemed to be sleeping, but a closer scrutiny revealed to the farmer that the Angel of Death had visited the little home on wheels. For a home it evidently had been. In the roomier part of the wagon a beautiful little girl of three sat on a stack of folded bedding, while in a crude box-like crib a sickly looking infant lay sleeping.

Whenever Mrs. Silas Warner recalled that long ago day, she again experienced the varying emotions which had come to her following each other in rapid succession. She had been ironing when she had seen a queer canopied equipage coming up the lane which led from the highway. Believing it to be a peddlar, who now and then visited their farm, she had gone to the side porch, there to have her curiosity greatly aroused by the fact that it was her husband Si who was on the seat of the driver. Then her surprise had been changed to alarm when she learned of the three who were under the canopy. Awe, because she was in the presence of death, and tender sympathy for the little ones, who had evidently been orphaned, mingled in the heart of the woman as she held the scrawny, crying infant that her husband had given to her. Even with all these crowding emotions there had yet been room for admiration, when the little three-year-old girl was lifted down. The child stood apart, quiet and aloof. She had heard them say that her father was dead. She was too young to understand and so she just waited. A rarely beautiful child, with a tangled mass of light brown, sun-glinted hair hanging far below her shoulders, and wide, wondering brown eyes that were shaded with long curling lashes.

But still another emotion had been stirred in the heart of Susan Warner, for a most unexpected and unusual visitor had at that moment arrived. A coach, bearing the Poindexter Arms, turned into the lane, and when the liveried footman threw open the door, there sat no less a personage than the grand dame, Mrs. Algernon Poindexter-Jones, on one of her very infrequent visits to the farm which belonged to her estate. She had been charmed with the little girl, and after having heard the story, she announced that she would keep the child until relatives were found. Then she was driven away, without having stated her errand, and accompanying her, still quietly aloof, rode the three-year-old girl. A doctor and coroner soon arrived, having been summoned by Mrs. Poindexter-Jones. The latter had searched the effects of the dead man and had found an unfinished letter addressed to a bishop in the Middle West. In it the man had told of his wife’s death, and that he was endeavoring to keep on with his traveling missionary work in outlying mountain districts, but that his heart attacks were becoming threateningly more frequent. “There is no relative in all the world with whom to leave Gwynette, who is now three, and little Jeanette, who is completing her first year.” No more had been written.

After the funeral Mrs. Poindexter-Jones had announced that she would adopt the older child and that, if they wished, the farmer and his wife might keep the scrawny baby on one condition, and that was that the girls should never be told that they were sisters. To this the childless couple had rejoicingly agreed. The doctor and coroner had also been sworn to secrecy. The dead man’s effects were stored in the garret above the old adobe and the incident was closed.

Mrs. Poindexter-Jones left almost at once for Europe, where she had remained for several years.

Tenderly loved, and nourished with the best that the farm could produce, the scrawny, ill-looking infant had gradually changed to a veritable fairy of sunshine. “Jenny,” as they called her,

feeling that Jeanette was a bit too grand, walked with a little skipping step from the time that she was first sure that she would not tumble, and looked up, with laughter in her lovely eyes, that were the same liquid brown as were her sister’s, and tossed back her long curls that were also light brown with threads of sunlight in them. And ever after, there were little skipping steps to her walk, and, when she talked, it seemed as though at any moment she might break into song.

Jenny had never questioned her origin. She had always been with Granny Sue and Granddad Si, and so, of course, that proved that she belonged to them. She was too happy, just being alive, to create problems for herself to solve, and too busy.

There had been too few children on the neighboring ranches to maintain a country school, and Jenny had been too young to send on a bus to Santa Barbara each day, but her education had not been neglected, for a charming and cultured young woman living not far away had taught her through the years, and she had learned much that other girls of her age did not know.

When the weather was pleasant Jenny, her school books under her arm, walked to the hill-top home of her teacher, Miss Dearborn, but during the rainy season her grandfather hitched their faithful Dobbin to the old-fashioned, topped buggy and drove her to her destination in the morning, calling for her in the late afternoon.

But on one wild March day when Jenny had been thirteen, an unexpected storm had overtaken her as she was walking home along the coast highway.

Luckily she had worn her mackintosh, but as she was passing between wide, treeless meadows that reached to the sea on one side and a briary hill on the other, there had been no shelter in sight.

However, a low gray car had soon appeared around a bend and the driver, a youth whose face was hidden by cap, collar and goggles, had offered her a ride. Gladly she had accepted and had been taken to her home, where, to her surprise, Grandmother Sue had welcomed the lad with sincerest pleasure. That had been the first time Jenny Warner had met Harold, the only son of their employer, Mrs. Poindexter-Jones.

His visit had brought consternation to the little family at Rocky Point, for, inadvertently, he had told the old man that his mother planned selling the farm when she could find a suitable buyer.

The old woman sitting on the side porch dropped her sewing to her lap as she recalled that long-ago scene in the kitchen.

The farmer had been for the moment almost stunned by the news, then looking up at the boy with a pitiful attempt at a smile, he had said waveringly:

“I reckon you see how ’tis, Harry-boy. We’ve been livin’ here at Rocky Point so long, it’s sort o’ got to feelin’ like home to us, but you tell your ma that the Warners’ll be ready to move when she says the word.”

The boy had been much affected, and, after assuring them that perhaps a buyer would not be found, he had taken his departure.

When he had gone, Jenny had cuddled in her grandfather’s arms and he had held her close. Susan Warner remembered that the expression on his face had been as though he were thanking God that they had their “gal”. With her irrepressible enthusiasm the girl had exclaimed:

“I have the most wonderful plan! Let’s buy Rocky Point Farm, and then it will be all our very own.”

“Lawsy, child,” Susan Warner had remonstrated, “it’d cost a power o’ money, and it’s but a few hundred that we’ve laid by.”

But Jenny had a notion that she wanted to try out. “Granny, granddad,” she turned from first one to the other and her voice was eager, earnest, pleading: “Every Christmas since I can remember you’ve given me a five-dollar gold piece to be saving for the time when I might be all alone in the world. I want to spend them now.” Then she unfolded her plan. She wanted to buy hens and bees. “You were a wonderful beekeeper when you were a boy, granddad,” she insisted. “You have told me so time and again, and I just know that I can sell eggs and honey to the rich people over on the foothill estates, and then, when we have saved money enough, we can buy the farm and have it for our very own home forever and ever.”

The old couple knew that this would be impossible, but, since they had not the heart to disappoint their darling, the scheme had been tried. Every Saturday morning during the summer that she had been thirteen, Jenny, high on the buckboard seat, had driven old Dobbin up and down the long winding tree-hung lanes in the aristocratic foothill suburb of Santa Barbara. At first her wares were only eggs from her flocks of white Minorka hens, but, when she was fourteen, jars of golden strained honey were added, and gradually, among her customers, she came to be known as “The Honey Girl” from Rocky Point Farm. And now Jenny was fifteen.

Susan Warner was startled from her day-dreams by the shrill whistle of the rural mail carrier. Neatly folding her sewing (and Granny Sue would neatly fold her sewing if she were running away from a fire), the old woman went to the side porch nearest the lane where the elderly Mr. Pickson was then stopping to leave the Rural Weekly for Mr. Silas Warner and a note from Miss Isophene Granger for “The Honey Girl.”

“I reckon it’s a fresh order for honey or eggs or such,” the smiling old woman told him. The mail carrier agreed with her.

“I reckon ’tis! There’s a parcel o’ new girls over to the seminary,” was his comment as he turned his horse’s head toward the gate, then with a short nod he drove away.

Susan Warner went back into the kitchen, and, feeling sure that the note was not of a private nature, she unfolded the paper and read the message, which was couched in the formal language habitually used by the principal of the fashionable seminary.

“Miss Isophene Granger desires six dozen eggs to be delivered this afternoon not later than five.”

The old woman glanced at the clock. “Tut! Tut! And here it’s close to three. I reckon I’d better be gatherin’ the eggs this once. Jenny says it’s her work, but it’ll be all she can do to get there, with Dobbin to hitch and what not.”

Taking her sunbonnet from its hook by the kitchen door, the old woman went out to the barnyard where, in neat, wired-in spaces, there were several flocks of white Minorka hens. After filling the large basket that she carried with eggs, Susan Warner returned through the blossoming orchard, and although she was unconscious of it, she smiled and nodded at the bees that were so busily gathering honey; then she thought of her girl.

“Dear lovin’ child that she is!” The faded blue eyes of the old woman were tender. “Si and me never lets on that her plan can’t come to nothin’. ’Twould nigh break her heart. All told there’s not more’n seven hundred now in the bank, an’ the farm, when they come to sell it, is like to bring most that an acre, or leastwise so Pa reckons.”

But later, as Susan Warner was sorting the eggs and placing them in boxes holding a dozen each, she took a more optimistic view of the matter.

“It’s well to be workin’ and savin’, how-some-ever,” she concluded. “Our darlin’ll need it all an’ more when her granddad an me are took.” Then, before the old woman could wipe away the tears that always came when she thought of leaving Jenny, her eyes brightened, and, peering out of a window near she exclaimed aloud (although there was only a canary to hear), “Wall now, here comes Jenny this minute, singin’ and skippin’ up the lane, like the world couldn’t hold a trouble. Bless the happy heart of her!”

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CHAPTER II.
JENNY

Susan Warner turned to beam a welcome at the apparition standing in the open door of the kitchen. With the sun back of her, shining through the folds of her yellow muslin dress and glinting through her light, wavy brown hair, the girl did indeed look like a sprite of the springtime, and, to add to the picture, she held a branch, sweet with apricot blossoms.

“Greetings, Granny Sue!” she called gayly. “This is churning day, isn’t it?”

“That’s right, ’tis, Jenny darlin’, or leastwise ’twould o’ been ’ceptin’ for a message Mr. Pickson fetched over from Granger Place Seminary. There’s some new pupils come sudden like, I reckon, an’ they need eggs a day sooner than ordinary. I’ve got ’em all packed in the hamper, dearie. You’ve nothin’ to do but hitch Dobbin and start.”

“Righto, Granny Sue; but first I must put these poor blossoms into a jar. I found the branch broken and just hanging by a shred of bark on that old tree ’way down by the fence corner.”

Jenny took a brown jar from a cupboard as she talked and filled it with water from the sink pump.

“They’ll be lonely for their home tree, like as not,” she chattered on, “but perhaps they’ll be a bit glad when they find that they are to brighten up our home for a few days. Don’t you think maybe they will, Granny Sue? Don’t you think when we can’t do the thing we most want to do, we still can be happy if we are just alive and doing the most beautiful thing that is left for us to do?”

This last was called over her shoulder as she carried the jar and blossoming branch toward the door of the living-room. Luckily she did not pause for an answer, for the little old woman always felt confused when her girl began such flights of fancy. Had she been obliged to reply, she no doubt would have said:

“Why, ’taint likely, Jenny, that branch of apricot flowers even knows it’s broken off, an’ as for that, the ones that are left will make all the better fruit with some of ’em gone.”

While the girl was placing the jar on the living-room center table, close to the book that she had been reading, Granddad Si entered the kitchen for a drink, and upon hearing of the message from Miss Granger, he hurried to the barn to hitch old Dobbin to the cart, and so, when five minutes later the girl skipped out, laughing over her shoulder at her grandmother’s admonition to go more slowly, lest she fall and break the eggs, there was Granddad Si fastening the last buckles. He straightened up, pushed his frayed straw hat to the back of his head and surveyed the girl with pardonable pride.

“Jenny, gal,” he began, and from the expression in his eyes she knew just how he would complete the sentence, and so, laughingly, she put her free hand over his mouth.

“Oh, granddad, ’tisn’t so, not the least bit, and you mustn’t say it again. A stranger might hear you some time, and what if he should think that I really believed it.”

But the old man finished his sentence, even though the words were mumbled behind the slim white hand of his girl:

“It’s the Gospel truth, Jenny. I’m tellin’ ye! Thar ain’t a gal over to that hifalutin seminary that’s half as purty as yo’ be. I reckon I know, ’cause I watch the whole lot of ’em when they go down the road on them parade walks they take, with a teacher ahead and one behind like they was a flock of geese and had to have a gooseherd along, which more’n like they are. A silly parcel, allays gigglin’.”

The last half of this speech had been more clearly spoken, for Jenny, having kissed him on the top of the nose from the wagon step, had climbed into the cart.

As she was driving away, she called back to him: “Wrong you are, Granddad, for I am only an egg and honey vender, while they are all aristocrats. Good-bye.”

Then, a second later, she turned again to sing out:

“Tell Granny I’d like a chocolate pudding tonight, all hidden in Brindle’s yellowest cream.”

Long after the girl had driven away, the farmer stood gazing down the lane. An old question had returned to trouble him:

Was it honest not to tell her that she wasn’t their own kin?

He couldn’t do it. It would break all of their hearts. She was their kin, somehow. No own grandchild could be dearer. Then he thought of the other girl, Jenny’s sister. He had heard something that day about her, and he had been mighty sorry to hear it.

When his “gal” disappeared from sight, up one of the tree-shaded lanes leading toward the foothill estates, Farmer Si turned and walked slowly back to the kitchen. He delivered Jenny’s message about the chocolate pudding to his wife, who, even then, was preparing the vegetables for supper. Crossing to the sink pump, the old man began working the handle up and down. A rush of crystal clear water rewarded his effort and, after having quaffed a long refreshing draught of it, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Then, after hanging his hat on its nail by the door, he sank down in his favorite arm chair close to the stove and sighed deeply as though he were very weary. His wife looked at him questioningly and he said in a voice and manner which were evidently evasive:

“Powerful poor weather for gettin’ the crops started. Nothin’ but sunshine this fortnight past.”

Susan Warner was briskly beating the eggs needed for her darling’s favorite pudding. When the whirr had ceased she turned and smiled across the room at the old man whose position showed that he was dejected. “What’s worryin’ yo’, Si?” The tone of the old woman’s voice promised sympathy if it were needed. “’Tisn’t about the farm yo’re really cogitatin’. I can tell that easy. Thar’s suthin’ else troublin’ yo’, an’ yo’ might as well speak out furst as last.”

“Wall, yo’re close to right, Susan, as I reckon yo’ most allays are. I was mendin’ the fence down by the highway when ol’ Pickson drove up an’ stopped to pass the time o’ day, like he generally does, an’ he says, says he, ‘Si, have yo’ heard the news?’ I w’a’nt particular interested, bein’ as Pickson allays starts off that a-way, but what he said next fetched me to an upstandin’, I kin tell you.”

Susan Warner had stopped her work to listen.

“What did Mr. Pickson tell you, Si? Suthin’ that troubled you?” she inquired anxiously.

“Wall, sort o’ that way. Mabbe it won’t be nuthin’ to worry about, and mabbe agin it will. Pickson said as how Mrs. Poindexter-Jones had gone to some waterin’ place over in France for her nerves, an’ not wishin’ to leave her daughter in the big city up north alone with the servants, she’d sent her to stay in the seminary down here for the time bein’, an’, what’s more, a flock of her friends from San Francisco came along of her. Them are the new pupils you was mentionin’ a spell ago, as being the reason extra eggs was needed.”

The old woman stared at her spouse as one spellbound. When she spoke her voice sounded strained and unnatural. “Si Warner, do yo’ mean to tell me our Jenny has gone to fetch eggs for her very own sister an’ her friends? They’re likely to meet up wi’ each other now, arter all these years, an’ neither will know who the other really is. Oh, the pity of it, that one of ’em should have all that money can buy, and the other of ’em ridin’ around peddlin’ eggs and honey.”

But the old man took a different view of the matter. “Susan,” he said, “if our gal had the pick of the two places, I reckon she’d choose

stayin’ with us. I reckon she would.”

Susan Warner’s practical nature had again asserted itself. “Wall, there’s no need for us to be figurin’ about that. Jenny shall never know that she has a sister. Who is there to tell her? An’ what’s more, she’ll never have a chance to choose betwixt us and the Poindexter-Joneses.” Then, as a tender expression crept into the faded blue eyes, the old woman added, “Jenny wouldn’t leave us, Si. No, not for anyone. I’m sartin as to that, but I’m hopin’ she’ll never know as she isn’t our own. I’m sure hopin’ that she won’t.”

CHAPTER III.
FORLORN ETTA

Dobbin never could be induced to go faster than a gentle trot and this pace was especially pleasing to his driver on a day when the world, all the world that she knew, was at its loveliest. Having left the coast highway, she turned up the Live-Oak Canon road and slowly began the ascent toward the foothills.

There was no one in sight for, indeed, one seldom met pedestrians along the winding lanes in the aristocratic suburb of Santa Barbara. Now and then a handsome limousine would pass and Dobbin, drawing to the far side of the road, would put up his ears and stare at the usurper. He seemed to consider all vehicles not horse-drawn with something of disdain. Then, when it had passed, he again took the middle of the road, which he deemed his rightful place.

“Dobbin,” the girl sang out to him, “what would you think, some day, if you saw me riding in one of those fine cars?” Then, as memory recalled a certain stormy day two years previous, Jenny continued, “I never told you, Dobbin, but I did ride in one once. It was a little low gray car and the boy who drove it called it a ‘speeder.’”

Then, as Dobbin seemed to consider this conversation not worth listening to, the girl fell to musing.

“I wonder what became of that boy. Harold P-J, he called himself, and he said I mustn’t forget the hyphen. He laughed when he said it. There must have been something amusing about it. He was a nice boy with such brotherly gray eyes. He hasn’t been back since, I am sure, for he told granddad he would come to the farm the very next time his mother permitted him to visit Santa Barbara.” Then Jenny recalled the one and only time that she had seen Harold’s mother. It was when she had been ten. She had been out in the garden gathering Shasta daisies to give to Miss Dearborn, her teacher. She had on a yellow dress that day, she recalled; yellow had always been her favorite color and she had been standing knee deep among the flowers with her arms almost full when the grand coach turned into the lane. Jenny had often heard Granny Sue tell about the coach, on the door of which was emblazoned the Poindexter-Arms, and the small girl, filled with a natural curiosity, had glanced up as the equipage was about to pass. But it had not passed, for the only occupant, a haughty-mannered, handsomely-gowned woman had pulled on a silken cord which evidently communicated with the driver’s seat, for, almost at once, the coach had stopped and the woman had beckoned to the child.

“Are you Jeanette Warner?” she had asked abruptly. The child, making a curtsy, as Miss Dearborn had said all well-mannered little girls should, had replied that her name was Jenny. Never would the girl forget the expression on the handsome face as the eyebrows were lifted. The grand dame’s next remark, which was quite unintelligible to the child, had been uttered in a cold voice as though the speaker were much vexed about something. “I am indeed sorry to find that you are so alike.”

The haughty woman had then jerked on the silken cord in a most imperious manner and the coach had moved toward the farmhouse.

Jenny had never told anyone of this meeting, but her sensitive nature had been deeply hurt by the cold, disdainful expression in the woman’s eyes. She had sincerely hoped she never again would encounter the owner of Rocky Point, nor had she done so. Time, even, had erased from her memory just what Mrs. Poindexter-Jones had said, since, at the time, the words had conveyed no real meaning to the child. All that was left in her heart was a dread of the woman, and she had been glad, glad that she lived far away to the north instead of next door.

Suddenly the impulsive girl drew rein. “Dobbin,” she exclaimed joyfully, “stand still a moment. I want you to look at that wonderful stone wall around the Bixby estate. Isn’t it the most beautiful thing that you ever saw with the pink and white cherokee roses, star-like, all over it?” Then she waved her hand toward an acacia tree beyond the wall that was golden with bloom, and called out to an invisible mocking bird that was imitating one lilting song after another, “I don’t wonder that you shout hosannas of praise. It’s such a wonderful world to live in. Trot along, Dobbin! We must get the eggs to the seminary before five.”

The tree-shaded, lane-like road they were following had many a bend in it as it ascended higher and higher into the foothills, and, as they turned at one of them, Jenny again addressed her four-footed companion.

“Dobbin, do hurry! There’s that poor forlorn Etta Somebody who pares potatoes at the seminary. I see her all crouched down over a pan of vegetables every time I go into that kitchen to deliver eggs and honey, but not once has she looked up at me. I know she’s terribly unhappy about something. I don’t believe she even knows that she’s living in a wonderful world where everything is so beautiful that a person just has to sing. Please do hurry, Dobbin. I may never get another chance to speak to her and I want to ask her if she wouldn’t like to ride.”

Jenny slapped the reins on the back of the old dusty-white horse, and, although he at first cast a glance of indignation over his right shoulder, he decided to humor his young mistress, and did increase his speed sufficiently to overtake the tall angular girl who shuffled as she walked and drooped her shoulders as though the burden upon them was more than she could bear. She wore an almost threadbare brown woolen dress, though the day was warm, and a queer little hat which suggested to Jenny pictures she had seen of children in foreign lands. She had one day heard the cook address the girl as Etta in a voice that had expressed impatience, and so, pulling on the rein, Jenny called cheerily, “Etta, are you going up to the seminary? Won’t you ride with me? I’m taking the eggs a day early.”

The girl, whose plain, colorless face was dully expressionless, climbed up on the seat at Jenny’s side. “You look awfully fagged and dusty. Have you been walking far?” the young driver ventured.

The strange girl’s tone was complaining—“Far? Well, I should say I have. All the way to Santa Barbara railway station and back. Folks enough passed me goin’ and comin’, but you’re the first that offered me a lift.”

“Eight miles is a long walk,” the young driver put in, “on a day as warm as this” Etta’s china blue eyes stared dully ahead. She made no response and so Jenny again started Dobbin on the upward way.

From time to time she glanced furtively at her companion, wondering why she was so evidently miserable.

At last she said, “I suppose everyone was in a hurry. I mean the folks who passed you.”

But her companion, with a bitter hatred in her voice, replied, “Don’t you believe it. Most of ’em don’t have nothin’ to do that has to be done. Rich folks ridin’ around in their swell cars, but do you s’pose they’d give me a lift. Not them! They’d think as

how I’d poison the air they breathed if I sat too close. I hate ’em! I hate ’em all!”

Hate was a new word to Jenny and she did not like it. “I suppose some rich folks are that way, but I don’t believe they all are.” Then she laughed, her happy rippling laugh which always expressed real mirth. “Hear me talking as though I knew them, when I don’t. I never spoke to but one rich person in all my life, and just a minute ago I was wishing that I never would have to speak to her again.” Jenny wondered why Etta had walked to the railway station. As they turned the last bend before their destination was to be reached, she impulsively put her free hand on the arm of her companion and said, “Etta, would it help any if you told me why you are so dreadfully unhappy? I don’t suppose I could do anything, but sometimes just talking things over with someone who wishes she could help, makes it easier.”

The china blue eyes of the rebellious girl at her side were slowly turned toward the speaker and in them was mingled amazement and doubt. Then she remarked cynically, “There ain’t nobody cares what’s making me miserable.” But when Jenny succeeded in convincing the forlorn girl that she, at least, really did care, the story of her unhappiness was revealed.

CHAPTER IV.
A PITIFUL PLIGHT

“There ain’t much to tell,” Etta said bitterly, “but I haven’t always been miserable. I was happy up to the time I was ten. I lived with my grandfolks over in Belgium. My mother left me there while she came to America. She’d heard how money was easy to get, and, after my father died in the war and the soldiers had robbed my grandfolks of all they had on the farm, we had to get money somewheres. That’s why she came, takin’ all that she’d saved for her passage. How my mother got away out here to Californy, I don’t know, but anyway she did. She was a cook up in Frisco. Every month she sent money to my grandfolks. My mother kept writing how lonesome she was for me and how she was savin’ to send for me. The next year I came over with a priest takin’ charge of me, but when I got here they told me my mother had died and they put me in an orphanage. My grandfolks tried to save money to send for me to go back to Belgium, but what with sickness and they bein’ too old to work the farm, it’s seven years now, an’ the money ain’t saved. Last year, me bein’ sixteen, I got turned out o’ the orphanage and sent here to work parin’ vegetables. I don’t get but three dollars a week and board, and I’ve been savin’ all I can of it. But ’tain’t no use. That’s why I walked to the railway station over to Santa Barbara to ask how much money I’d have to save to take me home to my grandfolks.” The girl paused as though too discouraged to go on.

Jenny had been so interested that she had not even noticed that Dobbin had stopped to rest at one side of the steep road.

“Oh, you poor girl, I’m so sorry for you!” she said with a break in her voice. “I suppose it takes a lot of money for the ticket to New York and then the passage across the Atlantic in one of those big steamers.”

The tone in which her companion answered was dull and hopeless. “’Tain’t no use tryin’. I never can make it. Never! It’d take two hundred dollars. An’ I’ve only got a hundred with what my grandfolks have sent dribble by dribble.” The dull, despairing expression had again settled in the putty-pale face. “’Tain’t no use,” she went on apathetically. “I can’t save the whole three dollars a week. I’ve got to get shoes an’ things. Cook said yesterday how she’d have to turn me out if I didn’t get some decent work dresses; a fashionable seminary like that couldn’t have no slatterns in the kitchen.” Then, after a hard, dry sob that cut deep into the heart of the listener. Etta ended with “I don’t know what I’m goin’ to do, but it’s got to be done soon, whatever ’tis.”

Jenny felt alarmed, she hardly knew why. “Oh, Etta, you don’t mean you might take——” She could not finish her sentence. Her active imagination pictured the unhappy girl going alone to the coast at night and ending her life in the surf, but to her surprise Etta looked around as though she feared she might be overheard; then she said, “Yes, I am. I’m going to take one hundred dollars out of the school safe, and after I’ve got over to Belgium I’m going to work my fingers to the bone and send it back. That’s what I’m goin’ to do. I’ve told ’em at the station to keep me a ticket for the train that goes out tomorrow morning.” Then, when she felt, rather than saw, that her companion was shocked, she said bitterly, “I was a fool to tell you. Of course you’ll go and blab on me.” To the unhappy girl’s surprise she heard her companion protesting, “Oh, no, no! I won’t tell, Etta. Never, never! But you mustn’t steal. They’d put you in prison. But, most of all, it would be very, very wrong. You can’t gain happiness by doing something wicked. I just know that you can’t.”

Then, after a thoughtful moment, Jenny amazed her companion by saying, “I have some money that is all my very own. If Granny and Granddad will let me, I’ll loan you a hundred dollars, because I know you’ll pay it back.”

Radiant joy made Etta’s plain face beautiful, but it lasted only a moment and was replaced by the usual dull apathy. “They won’t let you, an’ they shouldn’t. I just told you as how I was plannin’ to steal, and if I’d do that, how do you know I’d ever send back your hundred dollars?”

“I know that you would,” was the confident reply. Jenny then urged Dobbin to his topmost speed, and since he had rested quite a while, he did spurt ahead and around a bend to the very crest of the low foothill where stood the beautiful buildings of the seminary in a grove of tall pine trees. The majestic view of the encircling mountain range usually caused Jenny to pause and catch her breath, amazed anew each time at the grandeur of the scene, but her thoughts were so busy planning what she could do to help this poor girl that she was unconscious of aught else.

They turned into the drive, which, after circling among well-kept gardens and lawns, led back of the main building to the kitchen door.

“I’m awful late and I’ll get a good tongue lashin’ from the cook but what do I care. This’ll be the last night she’ll ever see me.” Jenny glancing at her companion, saw again the hard expression in the face that had been so radiant with joy a few moments before.

“She doesn’t believe that I’m going to loan her my money,” Jenny thought. “And maybe she’s right. Maybe Granny and Granddad will think I ought not.” But what she said aloud was: “Etta, let me go in ahead and I’ll fix things up if you’re late and going to be scolded.” And so, when they climbed from the wagon, it was the girl from Rocky Point Farm who first entered the kitchen. “Good afternoon, Miss O’Hara,” she called cheerily to the middle-aged Irish woman who was taking a roast from the huge oven of the built-in range.

“Huh,” was the ungracious reply, “so you had that lazy good-for-nothing out ridin’, did you?” The roast having been replaced, the cook turned and glared at Etta, her arms akimbo. “Here ’tis, five o’clock to the minute and not a potato pared. How do you suppose I’m going to serve a dinner for the young ladies at six-thirty and all that pan of peas to shell besides.”

Etta was about to reply sullenly when Jenny, who had placed her basket of eggs on one end of

a long white table, turned to say: “Miss O’Hara, I want to ask you a favor. If I stay and help Etta get the vegetables ready, will you let her come over to my house to supper? Won’t you please, Miss O’Hara?”

Jenny smiled wheedlingly at the middle-aged Irish woman who had always had a soft spot in her heart for “the honey girl,” and so she said reluctantly, “Wall, if it’s what you’re wishin’, though the Saints alone know what you see in Etta Heldt to be wantin’ of her company.”

Ignoring the uncomplimentary part of the speech, Jenny cried joyfully: “Oh, thank you, thank you, Miss O’Hara! Now give me a big allover apron, please, for I mustn’t soil my fresh yellow muslin.”

Miss O’Hara’s anger had died away, confident that the peas would be shelled and the potatoes pared on time. She went about her work humming one of the Irish tunes that always fascinated Jenny.

Etta, without having spoken a word, took her customary place and began to pare potatoes, jabbing out the spots as though she were venting upon them the wrath which she felt toward the world in general, but even in her heart there was dawning a faint hope that somehow, some way, she had come to a gate on the other side of which, if only she could pass through, a new life awaited her.

She looked up and out of the window by which they were seated, when Jenny, pausing a moment in the pea-shelling, exclaimed: “Oh, Etta, do see those pretty girls. Aren’t they the loveliest? Just like a flock of butterflies dancing out there on the lawn. There are eight, ten, twelve! Oh, my, more than I can count! How many girls are there now at the seminary, Miss O’Hara?”

“With the three that came in today, there’s thirty-one,” the cook answered as she broke a dozen eggs into a pudding which she was stirring.

“Did three new pupils come today? Isn’t it late in the year to start in school? Only two months more and the long vacation will begin,” Jenny turned to inquire.

“It is late,” Miss O’Hara replied, then suddenly she stopped stirring the batter and stared at Jenny with a puzzled expression in her Irish blue eyes. “When I saw one of ’em, a haughty, silly minx, I thought to myself as I’d seen her before somewhere’s though I knew I hadn’t. Now I know why I thought that. There’s something about you, Jenny Warner, as looks like her. Folks do look sort of like other folks once in a while, and be no way related.”

Jenny agreed brightly. “Yes, Miss O’Hara, that’s absolutely true. My teacher has often said that the reason she has kept on tutoring me is because I look like a sister she once had. That makes two folks I resemble, and I suppose likely there are lots more. What is the new pupil’s name. Miss O’Hara?”

Then it was that the cook recalled something. “Begorrah, and maybe you know her being as her ma owns the farm you’re living on.”

Jenny looked up with eager interest. “Oh, no, I didn’t even know Mrs. Poindexter-Jones had a daughter. But I do know the son Harold. That is, I met him for a few moments once two years ago, and now I do recall that he mentioned having a sister.” Then, returning to the shelling of the peas, she concluded with: “You know they have not lived in Santa Barbara lately. I never saw the mother, that is, only once.”

“Well, you’re not likely to do more than see the daughter. She wouldn’t speak civil to a farmer’s granddaughter.” Jenny’s bright smile seemed to reply that it troubled her not at all.

For another ten minutes the girls worked silently, swiftly; then Jenny sprang up, removed her apron and, as she donned her hat, she exclaimed: “Miss O’Hara, you just don’t know how grateful I am to you for having said that Etta might go home to supper with me.”

Although the cook regretted having given the permission, she merely mumbled a rather ungracious reply.

Etta went up to her room to put on her “’tother dress,” as she told Jenny, but on reaching there she bundled all her belongings into an ancient carpet bag, stole out of a side door and was waiting in the buggy when Jenny reached it.

“Well, I sure certain don’t see how ’twas the ol’ dragon let me go along with you,” Etta Heldt declared, seeming to breathe for the first time when, high on the buckboard seat at Jenny’s side, old Dobbin was actually turning out of the seminary gates that had for many months been as the iron-barred doors of a prison to the poor motherless, fatherless and homeless girl. And yet not really homeless, for, far across the sea on a small farm in Belgium there was a home awaiting her, and a dear old couple (Jenny was sure that they were as dear and loving and lovable as were her own grandparents) yearning for the return of their only grandchild.

Jenny, who always pictured in detail anything and everything of which she had but the meagerest real knowledge, was seeing the old couple going about, day by day, planning and striving to save enough to send for their girl, but failing because of the privation that had been left blightingly in the trail of the cruel world war. Then her fancy leaped ahead to the day when Etta would arrive at that far-away farm.

Jenny’s musings were interrupted by a querulous voice at her side.

“Don’t you hear nothing I am saying? What do you see out there between your horse’s ears that you’re starin’ at so steady?”

Jenny turned a pretty face bright with laughter. “I didn’t see the ears,” she confessed, “and do forgive me for not listening to what you were saying. Oh, yes, I recall now. You wondered what the old dragon would say when she found you were really gone.”

Then, more seriously: “Truly, Etta, Miss O’Hara isn’t dragony; not the least mite. I have sold eggs and honey to her for two years, long before you came to be her helper, and she always seemed as glad to see me as the dry old earth is to see the first rains.”

Then, hesitating and slowly thinking ahead that her words might not hurt her companion, she continued: “Maybe you didn’t always try to please Miss O’Hara. Weren’t you sometimes so unhappy that you let it show in your manner? Don’t you think perhaps that may have been it, Etta?”

“Oh, I s’posen like’s not. How could I help showin’ it when I was so miserable?”

Then, before Jenny could reply, Etta continued cynically:

“Well, I’m not goin’ to let myself to be any too cheerful even now. ’Tisn’t likely your grandfolks’ll let you loan me a hundred dollars. How’ll they know but maybe I’d never return it. How do you know?”

Jenny turned and looked full into the china blue eyes of her companion. The gaze was unflinchingly returned. Impulsively Jenny reached out a slender white hand and placed it on the rough red one near her.

“Etta Heldt,” she said solemnly, “I know you will return my money if it lies within your power to do it. I also know that when it came to it, you would not have stolen money from the Granger place safe. There’s something in your eyes makes me know it, though I can’t put it into words.”

As the other girl did not reply, Jenny continued: “I’m not sure certain that I can loan you my money, of course. I have been saving and saving it for two years so that I could add it to the money grandpa had if we needed it to buy Rocky Point Farm, but the farm hasn’t been put on the market, granddad says, and so I guess we can spare it for awhile.”

Suddenly and most unexpectedly the girl at her side burst into tears. “Oh, oh, how sweet and good you are to me. Nobody, nowhere has ever

been so kind, not since I came to this country looking for mother. When they told me she was dead and had been buried two days before I got here, and all her belongings sold to pay for the funeral, nobody was kind. They just tagged me with a number and sent me with a crowd of other children out to an orphan asylum. And there it was just the same: no one knew me from any of the rest of the crowd.”

There were also tears in her listener’s eyes.

“Poor, poor Etta, and here I’ve been brought up on love. It doesn’t seem fair, someway.” Then slipping an arm comfortingly about her companion, Jenny said brightly: “Let’s keep hoping that you can borrow my money. Look, Etta, we’re coming to the highway now, and that long, long lane beyond the barred gate leads right up to my home. Don’t cry any more, dearie. I just know that my grandfolks will help you, somehow. You’ll see that they will.”

Thus encouraged, the forlorn Etta took heart and, after wiping away the tears which had brought infinite relief to her long pent-up emotions, she turned a wavering smile toward Jenny.

“I’ll never forget what all you’re trying to do for me. Never. Never,” she ended vehemently. “And I’m hoping I’ll have the chance some day to make up for it.”

“All the reward that I want is to have you get home to your grandfolks and be as happy with them as I am with mine,” Jenny called brightly as she leaped out of the wagon to open up the barred gate.

CHAPTER V.
FRIENDS IN NEED

Grandma Sue had been often to the side porch nearest the lane and had gazed toward the highway wondering why her girl did not return. The supper had been ready for some time and the specially ordered chocolate pudding was done to perfection. At last the old woman hurried back into the kitchen to exclaim: “Wall, I declare to it, if Jenny ain’t fetchin’ someone home to supper. I reckon its Mis’ Dearborn, her teacher, as she sets sech a store by.”

But, as Dobbin approached at his best speed (for, was he not nearing his own supper?) the old woman, peering from behind the white muslin curtains at a kitchen window, uttered an ejaculation of surprise. “Silas Warner,” she turned wide-eyed toward the old man, who, in carpet slippers, had made himself comfortable in his tipped back arm chair to read the Rural News.

“Yeap, Susan?” his tone was one of indifferent inquiry. He presumed that his spouse was merely going to affirm what she had already suspected. Well, even if that were true, all he would have to put on was the house coat Jenny had made for him. It never would do to go to the table in shirt sleeves if teacher—he rose to carry out this indolently formed decision when he saw his wife tip-toeing across the room toward him, her finger on her lips. “Shh! Don’t say nothin’, Si!” she whispered. “Jenny’s left the horse hitched and she’s comin’ right in and trailin’ arter her is a gal totin’ a hand satchel. Who do you cal’late it can be?”

The old man hastily slipped on the plaid house coat and stood waiting, trying not to look too curious when their girl burst in with, “Oh, Granny, Granddad, this is my friend Etta Heldt. You know I told you about the girl who pares vegetables up at the seminary and who always looked so—so unhappy.” Jenny did not want to say discontented as she had that other time. “Well, I’ve found out what makes her unhappy and I’ve fetched her over to supper. Etta, this is my Grandmother Sue and my Granddaddy Si.”

The strange girl sent a half appealing, half frightened glance at each of the old people and then burst into tears.

Jenny slipped a protecting arm about her new friend, as she said by way of explanation: “Etta’s all upset about something. I’ll take her into my room to rest a bit, and then I’ll come back and tell you about it.”

Left alone, the elderly couple looked at each other in amazement.

“I reckon that poor girl is like the stray kittens and forlorn dogs our Jenny fetches home so often,” the old woman said softly. “I never saw such a hungerin’ sort of look in human eyes afore.”

The old man dropped back into his armed chair and shook his head as much as to say that their “gal’s” ways were beyond his comprehension. A moment later that same “gal” reappeared and, going at once to her grandfather, she knelt at his side and held his knotted work-hardened hand in a clinging clasp.

“Tut! Tut! Jenny, you’re all a-tremble.” The old man always felt deeply moved when the girl he loved seemed to be troubled. He placed his free hand on her curls.

“I reckon you’d better start at the beginnin’. Me’n your grandma here is powerful curious.”

The girl sprang up. “Granny dear,” she pleaded, “you sit here in your rocker and I’ll be close between you on this stool. Now I’ll tell you all and please, please, please say yes.”

The two old people looked lovingly into the eager, uplifted face of their darling and wondered what the request was to be. They never had denied their “gal” anything she had asked for in the past, but they had always been such simple desires and so easily fulfilled. However, there was an expression in the girl’s lovely face that made them both believe that this was to be no ordinary request.

Jenny glanced from one to another of her grandparents anxiously, eagerly. Then, taking a hand of each, she fairly clung to them as her words rushed and tumbled out, sometimes incoherently, but the picture was clearly depicted for all that. The two old people could see the forlorn little Belgian girl coming alone to America to join the mother who had died and been buried only two days before the child reached San Francisco. Then the long dreary years in a crowded city orphanage where no one really cared.

Grandma Sue began to wipe her eyes with one corner of her apron at that part of the story. She was thinking that their own darling might have been brought up in just such a place had not Grandpa Si happened to see the canopied wagon on that long ago day. The girl felt the soft wrinkled hand quivering in her clasp, and she looked up almost joyfully, for she believed she had an ally. Then she told of the time when Etta had reached an age where she could no longer be kept in the institution and how work had been procured for her paring vegetables at Granger Place Seminary. Food and a place to sleep were about all that orphan girls were given, and so, although she had tried and tried to save the little money she earned, she could not, for she had to buy shoes and clothes.

The old woman nodded understandingly. “What was she savin’ for, dearie? Anything special?”

“Oh, yes, Grandma Sue, something very special.” Then Jenny told about the feeble old grandparents far across the sea whose little farm had been laid waste by the war and how they longed for their granddaughter to be a comfort in their last days. At this point Grandpa Si took out his big red bandana handkerchief and blew his nose hard. He was thinking what it would mean to them if their Jenny was far away and couldn’t get back. Then, looking at their “gal” shrewdly, he asked, “Jenny, darlin’, what be yo’ aimin’ at? Yo’ ain’t jest tellin’ this story sort of random-like, be yo’?”

The girl shook her head. “No! No!” Her tear-brimmed eyes implored first one and then the other. Then she explained that it would take one hundred dollars to pay for Etta’s transportation in the steerage.

How the girl pleaded, her sensitive lips quivering. “Think of it, Grandma Sue, Granddad, only

one hundred dollars to take that poor girl to her old grandparents who love her so. Won’t you let me loan her that much from the money I’ve made selling eggs and honey? Please, please say that you will. You’ve always told me that it is mine and oh, I do so want to help Etta.” Then, as her surprised listeners hesitated, she hurried on: “She’ll pay it back, every cent, and only the other day, Granddad, you said you didn’t think the farm was going to be sold, because nothing more had been heard about it.”

The old man’s eyes questioned his spouse. Still tearful, Grandma Sue nodded. Then drawing the girl to her, she held her close as she said, “Silas, I reckon we owe it to the good Lord to help one of His poor little children.”

“O, Granny! O, Grandpa! However can I thank you?” The flushed, happy girl sprang up, kissed each of them and ran toward the bedroom to tell the wonderful news to the waiting Etta.